Entourage 2004 stalls synching with Exchange 2003 - spinning ball

[deckman]

Running Entourage 2004 11.2.1, OS X 10.4.2 on a Dual 2GHz G5 PowerMac,
connecting to Exchange 2003 on Small Business Server 2003.

I have put the Microsoft User Data folder for my user in the Spotlight
Privacy pane.

Whenever my mailbox is synchronizing, it stalls when synchronizing with
my Deleted Items and Sent Items folders and I just get the spinning
ball in Entourage for a period of time before I can continue working in
the application.

This was also happening with Office Mac SP2 and OS 10.4
My system was upgraded to Tiger and Office SP2 very close together, so
I'm unsure of which might be causing the issue, but on Panther 10.3.9
and Entourage 2004 SP1, everything was working fine.

Is this a known issue?
Is anyone else having this issue?
Is there a limit to how many messages it can synchronize with in a
folder? My Deleted Items and Sent Items are quite large, there are
approximately 10,000 emails in each.

Any help would be great. I'm currently having to use Virtual PC or OWA
and it's quite frustrating and much slower to use.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Whenever my mailbox is synchronizing, it stalls when synchronizing with
my Deleted Items and Sent Items folders and I just get the spinning
ball in Entourage for a period of time before I can continue working in
the application.

Do you have large number of contacts added in projects in Entourage ??

Corentin

 

[Boettcher, Scott]

Please post your OS version and Entourage version...

If you're running OS 10.4.x, remove the "Microsoft User Data" folder from
indexing in Spotlight via the Spotlight system preference by adding it to
the Privacy tab.

Users/you/documents/microsoft user data

SB

 

[deckman]

Nope. I only have one project right now and it only has one contact.

 

[deckman]

Please see my original post for all the information.

I have already put the Microsoft User Data folder in the Privacy area
in Spotlight so that it's not indexed.

All of my OS information is in the original post.

Entourage 2004 11.2.1
OS X 10.4.2
Connecting to an Exchange 2003 Server located on a Small Business
Server 2003 box.

Dave

 

[Boettcher, Scott]

If you don't quote the OP, we don't see it - and I'm not going to search
through all your posts to find it.

SB

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Nope. I only have one project right now and it only has one contact.

:-\ I had hope. That's a known cause for that kind of thing...
It light be a corrupted cache / database issue. If you fullly rebuild
the database (press alt as you launch Entourage), Entourage will trash
the Excahgne cache and redownload everything clean from the server.
You loose group attribution on your Exchange contacts and calendar
events in the process though :-\


Corentin

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

That's not fair, Scott. deckman DID include everything in his one and only
post in this thread (to date at the time you replied). But you chose to
reply to Corentin's reply instead of to decknam's original post, and it was
Corentin who snipped the version details.

You're the one who is at fault here: deckman included all details, Corentin
did snipping when replying (good usenet practice). You were in error in
accusing deckman of omitting details. All you had to do was go up to the
original post instead of replying to Corentin's reply. Or at least not get
shirty with deckman when he put you right.

What I would recommend is grouping messages on newsgroups and mailing lists
by Subject, or some Arrangement that's based on Subject. (I use a custom
arrangement that groups by Subject, sorts groups by Sent and sorts within
groups by Sent.) So the original is just above the later replies (like
Corentin's). I usually View Unread Only, but even if the older messages are
hidden from view , cmd-shift-O brings them back. No searching necessary.
It's just there.

I'm describing Entourage 2004's sorting in Newsgroups. (You're using
Entourage too.) Some other news readers do it even better. One of the best
reasons for using a newsreader and not a browser (Google) for regular news
reading, of course.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[deckman]

If you fullly rebuild

the database (press alt as you launch Entourage), Entourage will trash
the Excahgne cache and redownload everything clean from the server.

Thanks Corentin. I tried this yesterday, deleted my existing database
and started with a fresh database and synched from Exchange to my new
empty database but still experiencing the same problem.

Is it possible that a corrupt message or two on the Exchange server
could be causing the problem? Maybe Entourage is having a problem
with a couple of messages in my Sent or Deleted Items folder...

I'll try archiving and emptying those two folders and see if that
solves the issue.

Thanks for all your suggestions so far.

 

[Boettcher, Scott]

Point taken, Paul - but you calling me out for being "shirty" is ironic.

The main point here is that I wish people would setup to quote posts and not
just put their replies in posts.

SB

 

[deckman]

The main point here is that I wish people would setup to quote posts and not
just put their replies in posts.

SB

Sorry, but i'm accessing the system through Google Groups since my
Entourage is acting so poorly...
Google groups does not do this by default.

 

[Boettcher, Scott]

OK, sorry "deckman"
I'm getting' old, and a bit cranky
For me, it's like getting an email reply without the original email to put
things in perspective.

All good - sorry to have been "shirty"

SB

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Is it possible that a corrupt message or two on the Exchange server
could be causing the problem? Maybe Entourage is having a problem
with a couple of messages in my Sent or Deleted Items folder...

Quite possible indeed... Actually, if reseting the sync cache made no
difference, I would say that this is the most likely culprit.

Corentin

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Hi, Scott

I'd certainly be hypocritical if I called you out for being "shirty" when
giving out _correct_ advice, perhaps! But it just compounded the issue since
deckman had done nothing wrong (as you have gracefully since acknowledged).

As far as your main point goes (and I guess you meant to direct it at
Corentin here, who was the one who snipped deckman's original post), that's
actually against all "usenet" protocol, or netiquette, although this
netiquette is probably becoming a bit outdated for some people.

Precisely because news groups and mailing lists do already contain all
previous messages in the thread, and because you can sort by thread,
including all previous messages was always very, very strongly criticized.
Even today, many newsgroups (not this one) and mailing lists actually ban
people who do so - this includes virtually all top-posters. The main reason
for that is that back in the days when everyone was on dial-up, and had
small hard disks for storage too, having dozens or hundreds o messages
download containing all previous messages quoted, with the messages getting
larger and larger each time, was a terrible waste of bandwidth. Now it
hardly matters for people on broadband, but there are still some people here
on dial-up.

Top-posting (as I'm doing here) that includes all previous messages in the
correspondence, is typical and expected in business email, where previous
correspondence would probably be hard to find (sorted by date, not subject),
new cc's are constantly being added and need to be brought up-to-date, and
so on. It's always been the default in Outlook and Outlook Express Windows,
but not on any Mac email (let alone news) client, I don't think (aside from
the MSN for Mac), although many, like Entourage, can do it. Entourage lets
you do one style for email and another for news, by default. (And I have
scripts, like the one I just used here, to allow for doing your non-default
style on a per-message basis.)

Personally, I still prefer judicious snipping of quotes to quote only the
relevant bit to which I'm reply, and intersperse my replies inline with
signature at bottom. I group/sort by thread so I can easily check previous
messages, as I said last time. But when someone else has already top-posted
I'll usually continue in the same mode, as I'm doing here.

Anyway, _you_ might wish that everyone quoted the whole correspondence (in
which case bottom posting gets tedious, so you probably want them to top
post as well), but many people do not. I don't think you'll ever get
Corentin to do that in a million years - he's a Mac and usenet type from way
back.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[HeadHunter]

Is anyone else having this issue?

Is there a limit to how many messages it can synchronize with in a
folder? My Deleted Items and Sent Items are quite large, there are
approximately 10,000 emails in each.

I am experiencing the exact same problem. My folders are small so
this problem should have nothing to do with the size of your folders.
In looking through other discussion groups, nobody seems to have
solved this problem yet. I have checked and rebuilt the databases, I
have deleted and then re-established the exchange accounts (multiple
times), and nothing has worked so far. I expect Microsoft will have to
come out with yet another patch after 11.1.2. Hopefully soon.

 

[Boettcher, Scott]

Yeah, carry-over from waaaay back in my days when Al Gore, I mean, UCLA/MIT
started the whole thing...

Top-posting is what I prefer, and should have said that as opposed to saying
everything should carry-over.

I sort by "received" for everything - I hate to mess with different views,
so I really like knowing what replies are replying to.

I've been mostly posting in forums online, and that's why I blame the new
rulse for the old-skool user groups here.

I should just read here and stick to posting online

You and I go back quite a ways Paul. No hard feelings, but as usual,
"talking" online is no replacement for the phone or one-on-one. Smiley's
don't always help.

Best,
ScottB

 

[deckman]

Well, just thought I'd let you all know that by archiving and emptying
my Sent and Deleted items folder, Entourage seems to be back to it's
old self and running along quite well.

So, I would conclude that one of the two following contributed to the
problem:

1. There were corrupt messages on the Exchange server that Entourage
was having trouble with when synching. There couldn't have been any
locally, as I was starting with a blank database.

2. Entourage has problems with synching large folders.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

deckman

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

So, I would conclude that one of the two following contributed to the
problem:

1. There were corrupt messages on the Exchange server that Entourage
was having trouble with when synching. There couldn't have been any
locally, as I was starting with a blank database.

I suspect that was the case here.

2. Entourage has problems with synching large folders.

Hum... :-> indeed.... It's usually performances issues though, not
complete hangups (several users here have really large acounts and they
all eventually managed to get it all in). I shoudl also say that since
the latest service release, Exchange is TREMENDOUSLY faster for me. It
looks like there has been some really big improvements in this regard.
One workkaround for that type of problem: set Entourage to only download
the first xxx kB of each mesage. You can still click on a link to
download the rest when you need it and that really really sppeds up
things.

Corentin